


Philosophising to the Beat

by apiphile



Category: Calvin & Hobbes
Genre: Gen, M/M, also hello, directly into the update box, i could have written something meaningful or useful or erotic but no, i wrote this dumbass shit, if he didn't then just pretend that i bothered to fact check and made a different choice, like some kind of fevered idiot monkey fuck, tag field terrorism, this bullshit just infested my mind out of nowhere, thomas hobbes wrote the levithan, while i was doing nothing with my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 09:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18008315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile
Summary: Two boys at definitely not Harvard; not really meet-cute, more meet-dumb. All the dumb boy stuff that impulse control normally stops you from doing, if you have it.





	Philosophising to the Beat

College was everything he'd expected. 

It was everything he'd expected because Calvin had made a point of actually listening to his dad's tongue-in-cheek cynicism at face value until his mom made an aggravated noise and threatened to climb out of the car window. Calvin, on the other hand, felt fantastically well-prepared for the avalanche of administrative errors that descended on the freshmen like snowflakes made of poop--an observation that he couldn't help sharing with the guy standing next to him.

"Shitvalanche," his neighbour agreed, as they waited in line for the registrations desk to stop being so on fire.

"Avaturdche," Calvin suggested. 

"Turdnado," the guy countered, as the line moved forward and someone at the back started sighing really pointedly. 

"Shitnami," Calvin said. The guy next to him in the line was nearly a foot taller than him. Obscenely tall. Not that Calvin was exactly unused to the experience of having people loom over him--he was pretty sure he'd just straight up stopped growing at 14--but this dude was _tall_. He looked like a whole basketball team in one person. A human noodle. 

"Poopcano," said the guy, and the line moved again. "Do you like, know what you're gonna major in besides poop jokes?"

"I can't major in poop jokes?" Calvin asked in loud, mocking horror, grabbing at his head with both hands and hitting himself in the face with his paperwork. "Oh my god, I have to go--"

"That's _theatre_ ," said someone further down the line.

"Ew," said Calvin. He dropped his hands from his head, and held one of them out to shake. "Hi, I'm Calvin, I have no idea what I'm doing."

The guy with the poop jokes, who was wearing a t-shirt that didn't quite reach the whole length of his torso, and had a profile like a statue of an African king Calvin saw on a museum trip once, gave Calvin's hand a cautious shake. "Hi, I'm..." he paused for slightly too long. "Thomas. Definitely Thomas. I'm... not even sure if I'm allowed to major in my major. I came up on a sports scholarship--"

"Basketball?" Calvin said, still shaking Definitely-Not-Thomas by hand. "You look like, basketball height."

" _Football mascot_ ," said Not-Thomas, shaking his head and Calvin's hand with equal ferocity. "I used to be a cheerleader."

"Get _out_ ," Calvin choked, unable to stop shaking his hand now he'd started. "You can't get a sports scholarship for being a football mascot! Can you?"

"I guess I can since I'm here," said Probably Not Thomas. He was wearing a Dead Kennedys t-shirt, which Calvin wouldn't have expected, and he was still shaking Calvin's hand. "At what point does shaking someone's hand become weird?"

"Oh like at least thirty seconds ago," said Calvin, as someone at the front of the line started arguing, very loudly, with the registrations clerk. He carried on shaking Not Thomas by the hand, and tried to make eye contact, to establish if not dominance, then at least that he fully understood what he was doing, which he in fact did not. "But... we've started now."

"Shall we see how long we can keep this going?" said Not Thomas, showing his teeth. It was probably a smile, thought Calvin, who had been assured that he looked himself like he was figuring out how to eat people when he smiled too much. 

"Sure," said Calvin, "Let's make it _weird_."

* * *

"I think," Calvin said, hanging out of a branch of the campus lime tree while Not-Thomas kept watch, "I might major in philosophy."

"You can't," said Not-Thomas. The squirrel Calvin was attempting to get his Cheeto packet back from gave him a startled, bulging-eyed look, and hopped further into the branches. "I forbid it. My parents named me after a philosopher."

"What, 'Thomas'?" Calvin said, inching up the tree.

"Sure," said Absolutely Not Thomas.

The squirrel raced further along the branch with a flick of its tail. The branch was thinner at the other end. The Cheetos were, impressively, still clenched in its teeth.

"I know that's not your name." Calvin grabbed at the branch above for balance.

"But you don't know what *is*, so it's still Thomas," said Thomas The Liar, watching the squirrel dangle from the end of the branch. "Did your parents name you after the president? I was gonna ask."

"Nope," said Calvin, concentrating on the slippery bark ahead. "The Swiss theologist. Dad wanted to piss off Mom's mom. She's Lutheran."

"That's so incredibly petty," said Secret Thomas, following Calvin along the branch. "Did it work?"

"My dad is the most cynical man alive," said Calvin, as the squirrel sprang away into the air like a little furry rocket, and hit the next branch up without any apparent effort. "Also, I uh, I unscrewed the heads off all her weird, creepy Victorian dolls and put them behind the stove and they melted, which worked even better than calling me--oops--Calvin."

"You could just throw something at it," Thomas suggested, as Calvin began to wobble.

"Oh, now he tells me."

But it was too late. He'd begun to lose his balance. The squirrel hung down off the branch above and dangled his Cheetos just out of reach, smug triumph all over its fat, furry face. 

Calvin threw out an arm to catch himself on a branch that wasn't where he thought it was going to be, fell backwards, and landed with a loud yelp and a bump directly on top of Not Thomas, who rapidly became Flat Thomas, and immediately rolled Calvin off him with a screech of dismay. 

"Campus Security!" he hissed. 

"I'm going to lie on my back," said Calvin. "If anyone asks, I'm sunbathing."

There was a second, quiet _plop_ of something from above. Calvin turned his head.

The bag of Cheetos was lying unopened on the grass.

* * *

"I should probably look into Ritalin," Calvin said, surveying the burnt wreckage of his microwave with a special kind of horror. "I... I think I'm the reason we're not allowed these in dorm rooms."

"How's Ritalin going to help?" asked Not Thomas, eating tuna out of a can with chopsticks, watching the smoke spiral out of the extractor fan. "It's not flame-retardant. I tested it to find out. It also doesn't give you superpowers. Checked that too."

"I heard it was supposed to be good for impulse control," said Calvin, vaguely. He looked at the trash. It wasn't really big enough for the microwave. "My mom made me see a child psychiatrist and they suggested it because I put Susy in a headlock in the middle of a presentation in 5th grade instead of answering her dumb question about afterburners." 

"Nope," said Assuredly Not Thomas, flicking tuna at Calvin. "It just made it easier to focus on having no impulse control."

"Maybe you just need to take more of it," said Calvin, picking up the microwave with an _oof_. It was heavier than it looked. He'd kind of assumed it wouldn't be as difficult to get rid of the evidence now he was an adult. 

"That's _meth_ ," said Thomas, in a scandalised voice. "You can't tell a black man to take _meth_. A cop will literally materialise out of the side of that refrigerator and shoot me before I even get to the end of the sentence."

"Can he shoot me first," Calvin asked, dropping the microwave's corpse on top of the trash. It didn't even slightly fit. "Then I won't have to explain this to anyone."

"Explain what?" said Thomas, handing him the tuna can. "I didn't see anything. I was here the whole time and I definitely didn't see you put an entire baseball made of aluminum into the microwave for twenty minutes. So it can't have happened."

"You should sit in on my epistemology class," Calvin suggested, as they left the kitchenette. 

"Fuck no," said Definitely Not Thomas. "It clashes with Intro To Green Space Engineering."

* * *

"Oh shit," said Calvin, as they watched the Dr Pepper can detonate somewhere over the roof of the oncoming convertible. "I think we should be somewhere else."

"I think we should be at Denny's," One Hundred Percent Not Thomas said, leading the way off the interstate footbridge at a pace that Calvin couldn't hope to keep up with. He did his level best, but Tall Not Thomas was already waiting at the bottom of the steps by the time he even reached the top.

"This would be so much easier if either of us could drive," said Calvin despondently, stumbling down the last few steps. "We could beat a hasty retreat in style if you'd bothered to get a license."

"Me get a license?" Thomas snorted as they tramped away from the verge and into the darkness. It was a four mile walk to the nearest Denny's and Calvin was already beginning to regret whoever's smart idea it was to come out here. "I can't. I'm constitutionally unsuited to driving."

"Too tall."

"Nope."

"Too ADHD."

"Nope."

"Too--" Calvin snapped his fingers and frowned. "Oh, wait, I got it! Too many racist cops!"

"Ding!" said Entirely Not Thomas, reaching through the dark with unerring accuracy to poke Calvin in the middle of the forehead. "A Gold Star for Captain Calvin for reaching Level One of Woke White Person: Cynical Comments About Police Brutality!" He poked Calvin in the side of the face and whipped his hand away. "My mom wouldn't let me behind the wheel of a car in my hometown because of _life expectancy_.~" He paused. "Speaking of murder, as we nearly were--if I get shot in the back for yeeting Peeber cans at someone's Midlife Crisis Trophy, I need you to do me a favour."

"I will give you the most indecent burial possible," said Calvin, his hand uselessly on his heart. "I will bury you upside-down in the biggest vat of Lucky Charms I can legally acquire and I will tell everyone you died a noble death, defeated by the natural enemy of all man: the leprechaun."

Not Thomas But Definitely Exasperated reached out of the dark and slapped him on the back of the head.

"No, you genius, tell my mom I wasn't doing anything whatsoever, or she will dig me back up, resurrect me, and murder me again herself." He sighed into the cool night air. "She is, uh. Kind of fierce. A bit of a tiger, if you will."

"I don't think you're allowed to call someone a tiger mom unless they're Asian," said Calvin, thoughtfully. "And even then I guess it's ... kind of racist."

"Good thing she's Asian then," said Thomas, distantly. "And yes, that's why _I_ will and you _won't_." 

"So are you like..."

"Adopted? Yes."

"I was going to ask if you were up for pretending to be unconscious so I can try and get us a ride back to campus," said Calvin, not entirely truthfully. "My shoe is wet."

"Well _you_ should have learned to drive then," said Not Thomas, cheerfully. 

"Yeah, but I'm not constitutionally suited to it either," said Calvin. "Also, my dad said I wasn't allowed to learn until every other living person on the road was both blind and deaf and possibly also dead as well."

* * *

"Okay I really have to ask," said Calvin, lying face-down on his Thomas's bed while Thomas sat, hunched up like a very long gargoyle on the study desk, completely ruining his roommate's sketches.

"I don't have any left," said Thomas.

"Not the question," Calvin said, trying to get unwashed pillowcase out of his mouth. It smelled of eucalyptus and menthol and a bit of vanilla, which wasn't so bad, but it definitely tasted of unwashed college student pillowcase.

"Yes, but only on Sundays."

"Still not the question," said Calvin, hunching up like a cat with a hairball. "Ugh ow." He slid back into position again.

"If you gotta ask, you gotta ask," said Probably Not Thomas, fiddling with his phone. "I will consult The Magic Google."

"Did you really come here on a Sports Mascot Scholarship?" Calvin asked, lifting his face out of the pillow with the crook of his arm. 

"... No, you idiot, there's no such thing. I took out a loan like everyone else." Thomas sounded faintly disappointed. 

"Have you ever actually been a sports mascot?" Calvin persisted.

"Uh," said Thomas, warily. "No. I _was_ a cheerleader. But I wasn't 'funny' enough for the school mascot and they gave it to this kid in my class with Downs who didn't even want to do it because they wanted him to feel _included_ , which was bullshit, because Shawn just wanted to be on the swim team and they wouldn't even let him be swim team mascot so no, I was not."

"And you're totally not bitter about it," said Calvin, with a smirk that only the pillow saw. "Which brings me onto the real question."

Thomas sounded even more wary, like he had an inkling what Calvin was about to say. "How many were you planning on asking?"

"Oh, like, three or four hundred."

"I guess it _is_ a while until lunch," said Undoubtedly Not Thomas. "Hit me with your question-baton."

"Did you want to be a school mascot because you're like, a furry?" Calvin asked, idly.

Thomas gently slumped off the desk as if he'd been physically wounded and rolled under the bed like a movie marine. From the darkness of the dust and million-year-old carpets, he said in a hollow voice, "Maybe."

"Cool," said Calvin, letting his hand dangle off the side of his bed. "I found your old deviantart account, I think."

"CAL-vin," Thomas groaned, from under the bed, "that is the _literal opposite_ of cool."

"Hey," said Calvin, wiggling his fingers. "You remember last... Thursday? When you told me about the try-outs for the Mars preparation mission in Russia and I got so hype that I swallowed a whole box of mechanical pencil lead and then I was really freaked out it would puncture my intestine so you offered to go fishing for it down my throat with a magnet on a string and _instead_ I just ended up puking half-digested bagel on your phone?"

"Vividly," said Thomas, from under the bed. "Also... why?"

"I dunno," said Calvin, as Probably Not Thomas But Who Cares, Really, clasped his hand from under the bed like a friendly monster and more-or-less engulfed it. "I just remembered. I mean, you're a _total loser_. But I am too."

"Yeah," said Thomas, squeezing his hand lightly. "Also, what exactly were you doing to find that goddamn account anyway?"

"I mean what did I _just_ say about being a total loser?" Calvin asked, shoving his head against the wall so he could shout down the side of the bed. "Yeah, go on, take a wild guess. A really wild one."

"Cool," agreed Never Has Been Thomas, still hanging onto Calvin's fingers with his preternaturally large and very soft hand. "So, how long can I hold your hand before it starts being strange?"

"Dunno," said Calvin, down the crack of the bed. He sneezed. "Let's find out."

Thomas gave his fingers another squeeze. "Let's make it _weird_."


End file.
